Roberto LoBianco

Poughkeepsie Journal

Online

Funding for a state Lyme disease education and research institute has declined by more than 50 percent since 2008 — from $150,000 to $69,500 — in a state with among the highest rates in the nation for the tick-borne illness, state Department of Health figures show.

As a consequence, state Sen. Terry Gipson, D-Rhinebeck, said he has introduced legislation to provide $1 million, as the bill is worded, “for research, detection, education and outreach related to tick-borne illness.”

The mid-Hudson Valley has among the nation’s highest rates of the tick-borne illness, with five local counties placing in the top 10 per capita, according to the latest national figures, from 2002 to 2006.

New York state reported an average 7,700 Lyme disease cases in each of the last five years, with 435 residents in Dutchess and 370 in Ulster diagnosed in 2012. And new federal research suggests those figures could be 10 times higher because of undiagnosed and unreported cases.

“Sixty-nine thousand dollars out of a $141 billion New York state budget,” Gipson said in an interview in his Town of Poughkeepsie office. “This is basically nothing.”

The one-time appropriation would be allocated to the Department of Health’s Tick-Borne Disease Institute. Created in 1988 to promote research and outreach on tick-borne diseases, the institute has seen its funding dwindle 54 percent in the last five years. The funding has been used to help county health departments manage case counts and Lyme education.

Dr. Richard Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, agreed on the need for funding. “There’s little doubt in my mind that funding support for research on tick-borne disease is grossly inadequate and needs to increase,” said Ostfeld, a nationally known researcher who receives no state research funds.

However, Ostfeld said he wants to see more specifics about how grant proposals would be selected or how research proposals would be prioritized before supporting the bill.

Gipson’s bill is one of three pending Lyme disease bills, reflecting increasing concern over a growing public-health threat. Ostfeld and other scientists have reported growing numbers of pathogens in ticks — including babesia and Powassan virus — and growing rates of infected ticks.

One bill, sponsored by Assemblywoman Didi Barrett, D-Millbrook, and by Gipson in the Senate, would protect physicians from discipline by licensing boards when they treat outside of federally endorsed treatment protocols, which generally limit antibiotic courses to 28 days.

“We’re going to pass it in the Assembly, and we’re getting a lot of attention on the issue,” Barrett said of the physician-protection bill. “I hope the Senate does the same.”

Another bill would mandate that insurance companies pay for longer antibiotic treatments. Neither bill cleared Senate or Assembly health committees in the last session, though the insurance bill was voted out of the Senate insurance committee, Gipson’s office reported.

But while Lyme disease is rising on the legislative agenda, it is also becoming a political issue.

In early October, the Senate’s Republican majority announced the formation of the Senate Task Force on Lyme and Tick-Borne Diseases to map the state’s approach and improve treatment. All but one task force member listed in the announcement was Republican; the lone Democrat was in the breakaway Independent Democratic Caucus.

“It’s partisan,” said Gipson, noting that the task force had yet to meet.

State Sen. Kemp Hannon, R-Nassau County, who chairs the health committee and co-chairs the Lyme task force, said he would generally support more research funding, as Gipson proposes. However, “$1 million is only a drop in the bucket,” he added, noting that the problem needs to be addressed in “a more comprehensive manner.”

The task force’s goal is “to come up with an action plan that focuses on prevention,” Hannon said. He did not respond to Gipson’s assertion that the task force, which Hannon said has met by telephone, was partisan.

Jill Auerbach, who chairs the Hudson Valley Lyme Disease Association, said passing an insurance bill first could threaten Lyme-treating doctors if protections against discipline are not in place.

“It is imperative that the protection bill is passed prior to an insurance bill,” she said. The threat of disciplinary action “has had a chilling effect upon doctors” who might otherwise treat Lyme disease.

Barrett said the bills do not “necessarily need to happen at the same time.”

While Auerbach supports increased funding, she wants funds to target methods that “stop the ability of ticks to transmit disease pathogens, reduce tick numbers and reduce our exposure to ticks.”

The legislative session in Albany resumes in January, when the Lyme bills will once again be up for discussion.

Because Gipson’s funding proposal is an appropriations bill, it will have to be considered as part of the 2014 state budget process, according to Jonathan Heppner, Gipson’s communications director.

Gipson said this funding is a starting point for addressing “a lot of misinformation about the facts of Lyme disease,” which he called “one of the most aggressive diseases we have now.”